Virginia Republicans may have a strong candidate for the 2014 US Senate seat in Ken Cuccinelli. As reported in the Daily Caller, conservative writer and Congressional candidate Quin Hillyer gives voice to a movement to draft Ken to run against incumbent Democrat U.S. Senator Mark Warner.

Yet it would be a problem for the 2013 campaigner Ken Cuccinelli to run for U.S. Senate, from what we saw in Ken's unsuccessful campaign for governor. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Ken Cuccinelli as a potential senator. Yet Ken will fail badly unless he fires his 2013 campaign strategists, consultants, and leaders, and adopts a new strategy.

Note that no Republican is currently running who has ever held elected office before. That is why Ken Cuccinelli is such an interesting possibility. Many leaders are enthusiastic about either Howie Lind or Shak Hill. Yet in enormous and highly political Virginia, no Republican either well-known or experienced is even hinting at running. I have been talking up Ollie North or Gary Bauer, teasing Jim Martin about running, and hoping for Jamie Radtke, Bob Marshall, or George Allen. Maybe E.W. Jackson will run. Apparently Newt Gingrich has said no.

First, campaigning like Mitt Romney was the fundamental defect with Ken Cuccinelli as candidate for governor. This was in sharp contrast to Ken Cuccinelli, 2009 candidate for Attorney General or Ken Cuccinelli 2002 candidate for Virginia State Senate. The 2013 Cuccinelli was a paralyzed, programmed, brainwashed victim of campaign consultants. The man I went to law school with was not the man who showed up in the governor's race.

Second, and most important, Ronald Reagan did one thing that Ken Cuccinelli, Mitt Romney, and other Republicans fail to do these days. Ronald Reagan explained.

The Gipper went over the heads of the media and the political class and spoke directly to the American people. But it worked because Reagan had a message worth delivering. Reagan was able to move the public not because he talked, but because of what he actually said. Today, conservatives do want to fight and take it to the people. But they also have to be very persuasive.

Instead of treating voters like dummies or statistics in pie charts, Reagan talked to the owners of the country like real people. It was easy. That's how Ronald Reagan truly felt about his countrymen. He talked to the American people like his neighbors. If onlyGOP campaign consultants could just figure out how to fake that kind of heartfelt sincerity. Reagan understood the people he was talking to, from real life experience, not from consultants analyzing voter blocs for him.

Third, many argue that Republicans should nominate moderates like Chris Christie. But they always say that. No matter what happens, their advice to lurch Left never changes.

In 2012, Virginia Republicans nominated the establishment choice for U.S. Senate, George Allen, instead of tea party leader Jamie Radkte. But the establishment choice George Allen lost by 224,525 votes statewide compared to Ken Cuccinelli's 55,100 vote loss in 2013 statewide. The 2012 race demolishes the theory that in 2013 Republicans ran a candidate too conservative. Nominating a moderate in Virginia didn't work in 2012.

Fourth, Democrats ran a fake Libertarian, Robert Sarvis, to siphon off Republican votes. Only 24 hours before the election, Meredith Jessup at the Blaze revealed that an Obama campaign donation "bundler" -- Texas billionaire Joe Liemandt -- paid $150,000 for the petition drive that put Sarvis on the ballot. Ron Paul repudiated Sarvis for not espousing libertarian positions and campaigned for Cuccinelli.

Yet Cuccinelli's campaign wasn't awake enough to discover this dirty trick months earlier. Breaking that story six months ago might have changed the election. But the story broke only on Monday morning, November 5. The $150,000 donation was in January 2013. A competent campaign would have researched Sarvis' single largest campaign contributor. Sarvis took 145,638 votes (6.52%), while Ken lost by only 55,100 votes. But worse, for months Sarvis made Cuccinelli appear hopeless in opinion polls when Sarvis was polling at 10 percent. That scared away donors, volunteers, editorial support, and party assistance.

Hmm, the “baggage” argument was the same one people used against viable candidates like Gingrich in the last election.

“Baggage” essentially means that the person has been associated with a conservative cause or action that either didn’t work or worked and was trashed by the press (as in Gingrich’s House maneuver) and that therefore the GOP-e feels it can gleefully crow about the “baggage” and go on to nominate a baggage-free, loser candidate such as the dreadful Romney or the even more dreadful McCain.

He is a good candidate. It’s just the repubs have to be smarter. They have to have a good counter to liberal Texas billionaires getting Libertarians on the ballot to help the demos. We need to throw money to the Green Party or some other lib group.

If Cuccinelli got some fire in the belly and spent the remaining months of his AG office fighting Obamacare, do you agree with me that he stands a better chance of defeating Mark Warner than Howie Lind does?

18
posted on 11/12/2013 10:49:23 AM PST
by HokieMom
(Pacepa : Can the U.S. afford a president who can't recognize anti-Americanism?)

Cuccinelli may be the only viable candidate the GOP can must against Mark Warner. But, as the writer notes, he has to get rid of his campaign leadership and find a way to patch up the rift in the Virginia Republican Party. The presence of Robert Sarvis wasn’t the only reason Cuccinelli wasn’t able to raise money; he ran a poor campaign until the final two weeks and was out-spent 2-1. To give you some idea of how under-funded Ken was, he didn’t have a single TV ad in the Washington, DC market for the last two weeks of the race, and still almost won.

The Virginia GOP needs to find someone it can unite behind. My personal favorite is Randy Forbes, the 4th District Congressman; solid conservative, expert on national defense and the Navy’s shipbuilding program (critically important in Hampton Roads). But Congressman Forbes doesn’t have a lot of name recognition outside his district and shows no inclination to run against Warner. Damn shame, too...Warner is another rich buffoon who spent his way into a Senate seat.

One final thought: Republicans in the Old Dominion could take a lesson from their neighbors in North Carolina. Since 2008, the Tarheel State has moved steadily to the right; the GOP took control of the state legislature, forced Beverly Perdue to abandon her re-election bid, cut taxes and put a Republican back in the governor’s mansion.

True, North Carolina doesn’t have hundreds of thousands of federal workers in its northern-most counties, but there are plenty of libs in the Triangle area (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill). Yet, the GOP is growing in NC, while it is only treading water in Virginia.

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